I know what it means
by Haely Potter
Summary: Sarah has only ever had one soulmate mark, until suddenly she has two. Luckily, the second one is platonic. Or, Sarah Connor is always Kyle Reese's romantic soulmate, but that doesn't mean he is hers.


A/N: I've had a major writers block for close to a year! Let's hope it's gone after this!

I don't think anyone else has written a Terminator!soulmark!AU before, or if they have, I haven't found it. Oh well, someone has to be the first. :D

So, without further ado, read & review!

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 _Yes! Just please, don't hurt me!_ were not inspiring soulmate words to have, especially if they were already grey when you were born. Not that it was unusual to have grey words after Skynet's attack, which killed half of the human population. They became even more common when the machines started to gather humans for orderly disposal to camps.

There were some people who still had black words to indicate their soulmate was alive, such as John Connor and his soulmate and wife Katherine. Kyle's parents had been soulmates, they'd married just before Judgement day, and from what little Kyle could remember of them, they were… not happy, it was impossible to be happy in the world run by Skynet, as was being content, but maybe having a reason to survive was a more fitting term.

So when he landed in 1984 and his previously grey words blazed black against his skin, he didn't really think about them, though he acknowledged that they'd changed to _Come with me if you want to live!_

Then, of _course_ , Sarah Connor who somehow knew who he was, saved him from a terminator model he didn't know and shouted his words.

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Before her parents died and she was found by Pops, Sarah's words had been _Come with me if you want to live!_ They changed the night after, becoming _You're Sarah._ She also gained another set of words _Hey… um… what are you doing here?_ They were in a platonic blue, in contrast with the romantic black of her other words.

The words that had scared her parents so much sense once Pops managed to explain the story in the original timeline. Kyle Reese sent back in time to protect an unknowing and naïve Sarah Connor from a terminator like Pops, meeting for the first time in an alteration with the machine. Her new words also made sense, since Kyle knew who she was but apparently she was doing something different, something surprising this time around.

But her second set of words… Pops didn't have any files on Sarah Connor having a second soulmate, ever. Kyle Reese had always been her soulmate and that was it, no other possibility. Her romantic notions of soulmarks died with her parents, but to have Pops tell her the name of her soulmate and the son they would conceive together only for him to die… Only to have one path she could walk, becoming the Mother of the Human Resistance or all else would be lost… That was what made her get rid of her virginity at fifteen. Then she cried every night for a whole week, thinking she might have ruined everything, until Pops told her that the original Sarah hadn't waited for her soulmate either.

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 _Kyle, you can do this. Straight line. You just go, and you don't look back. Got it_? was probably one of the strangest soulmarks on the planet. His parents feared he might be somewhere during a terrorist attack or a natural disaster or something, and Kyle wasn't really looking forward to his soulmate telling him to leave them behind while he escaped. And they were his soulmate's first words to him too.

He wasn't expecting to meet her when he and his parents were called by the police because someone called himself Kyle Reese and matched his fingerprints. They were at the… the police headquarters in San Francisco, possibly, he wasn't sure, but the man calling himself Kyle certainly wasn't him. (Though later his parents would, when they thought he was asleep in his room upstairs, compare their faces, and come to the conclusion they do look a lot alike. And even later, when Kyle looks in the mirror in his early twenties, the same face stares right back at him.)

But back to his soulmate.

Something had happened that had the officers running around, and he wanted to know more, so he opened the door to the hallway just as a young woman hurried past. His mom calling him back attracted her attention. "Get Reese, I'm right behind you," she told the old man with her. She was with the man who shared his fingerprints!

The woman look at his parents. "Come with me if you want your son to live."

Next thing he knows, they're running to a stairwell, her telling his parents to get in their car and to go, but something shakes the building, like an earthquake, and he stops.

"Kyle!" His mom calls and gestures for him to go to her. "Kyle!"

But he can't move. All this is way beyond what he's used to.

Then the woman steps before him and takes his hand.

"Kyle, you can do this," she says the words Kyle knows better than his own name as she runs a finger from his palm all the way to the tip of his middle finger. "Straight line. You just go, and you don't look back. Got it?" she asks and squeezes his hand.

She is so beautiful, her face alight from the emergency lights shining outside. Her green eyes are so intense he thinks he just might have imagined nodding to her, but then she gives his hand a little pull that puts him in motion and he runs to his mom on the staircase landing, and as his mom leads him down more stairs, he keeps looking at his soulmate for as long as he can, because this might very well be the only time he sees her.

It isn't. The following afternoon, after a morning of news of the Cyberdyne terrorist attack the previous night, she walks up to him in their own yard. She's a little roughed up and he can see a bandage just under her clavicle.

"Hey Kyle."

"Hey… um… what are you doing here?" he asks without really thinking, before immediately cursing himself for not thinking something better to say to his soulmate.

Surprise shows on her face for a few seconds, before an understanding light reaches her eyes, and she shows the words he'd just uttered tattooed on her skin – in blue. "A friend of mine really needs to talk to you, if that's okay?"

Kyle feels like she could ask him anything and he'd do his best to deliver, no matter how difficult it might be, so he just nods and she waves her friend over.

It's the other Kyle Reese.

"Thank you," she says with a smile, and Kyle desperately tries to memorise it, before she walks away.

He watches her even after the other Kyle has reached him.

"She's my soulmate."

"Yeah, mine too," the other Kyle agrees.

"I'm just her platonic, though. I know what that means."

Other Kyle made a sympathetic sound in the back of his throat as he crouched so that his eyes were on the same level as Kyle's. "This might sound strange, but there's something I need you to remember. A message."

"Who do I tell?"

"Yourself. Over and over. Are you ready?" Kyle thinks he nods. "It goes like this: Remember, Genisys is Skynet…"


End file.
